


all some children do is work

by some_stars



Series: children's work [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: De-Aged, Folk Music, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jaskier is a good dad, M/M, Singing, also there are some vague ot3 hints at the end but no actual ot3 content (yet), bc geralt spends most of this fic being 9 years old, the geralt/jaskier is not really the foreground, there's also some minor geralt/yennefer but again they are Small Children most of the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23619517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some_stars/pseuds/some_stars
Summary: It's two children, he realizes as they slowly sit up. They look about eight or nine, not that he's much judge of children's ages. One is a girl, dark-haired, in a shabby dress. The other is a boy. His clothes aren't much better, and his hair isn't much lighter than the girl's, but his eyes—His eyes, Jaskier realizes with a distant sense of horror, are gold like a cat's. His mind makes one more valiant effort to keep from connecting the obvious dots and recognizing them, and then it finally does."How in the unholy fuck," Jaskier says to no one, "did this shit happen?"
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: children's work [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1807540
Comments: 302
Kudos: 2581





	all some children do is work

**Author's Note:**

> GOD I can't believe I'm finally done with this thing, the longest story I have ever written and certainly the one that gave me the most trouble. Many thanks to [Anoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anoke/pseuds/Anoke) and [Ace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter) for beta-reading this, giving extremely helpful notes and helping me make the stuff about baby Geralt sync up with game/book canon when possible. It doesn't always, which is mostly a deliberate choice to make it mesh better with the show, but you can blame only me if you don't like that.
> 
> Title is from [Children's Work](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr7OCZpKERM) by Dessa.

They run into Yennefer on what had been, until that moment, a perfectly lovely day.

It's the fifth time Jaskier has encountered her in the three years since their dramatic meeting in Rinde; Geralt, he knows, has met her rather more often. The two of them are positively familiar now, but then he supposes fucking someone once a season will do that.

She approaches them in the tavern, with a purpose to her stride that suggests she's been looking for them. Well—looking for Geralt, obviously. Five meetings, and she has yet to even acknowledge Jaskier without him addressing her first. Not that he particularly _wants_ her acknowledgement, of course. But there's something to be said for common courtesy.

"Yennefer!" he says, his voice as irritatingly hale and hearty as he can make it. "What a rare treat to be graced with your company. Again."

"Jaskier," she returns, "pity I can't say the same," and sits down across from Geralt. Which means next to him, which is...offputting. He scoots pointedly a little further towards the wall.

"It's good to see you," Geralt says with a slight tilt of his mouth. From him, it's practically a passionate declaration. She responds with a genuine smile, which makes Geralt actually smile. Jaskier rolls his eyes, and nobody notices.

"I know it's only been a few weeks," she says, which is news to Jaskier; he'd only fallen back in with Geralt two weeks ago, after spending most of the spring composing and enjoying a duke's patronage in Belgrave. "Unfortunately, this isn't a social call. You're in town for the monsters, aren't you?"

She is as well, it turns out—or rather, she's here for the wizard who's apparently been summoning them. "A favor for an old friend," she says, with a wryness to her voice that makes it clear the relationship is somewhat more complicated than that. Of course Yennefer doesn't have friends like a normal person. That would be far too human.

"Don't tell me you need _help_ ," Jaskier says. "Not the great sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg."

She glares at him, and he treasures it.

"Jaskier," Geralt grunts, a hint of admonishment in his voice, which is truly rich considering all the ruffled feathers Jaskier has had to soothe over the years because of _Geralt's_ lack of social graces.

He sighs, and settles back in his seat while they discuss the particulars of the matter, and wishes he could get up and leave without calling attention to himself. That's usually what he does, when Yennefer shows up and Geralt's focus narrows in on her like this, but then usually she isn't blocking his exit with her body. The last thing he wants to do is put himself in closer physical proximity to Yennefer. She'd probably turn him into a frog if he dared to touch her.

It's not like there's a reason for her to be so rude to him all the time. He, at least, has ample justification for his resentment—embarrassing and maudlin justification, to be sure, but it's _explicable._ Yennefer is apparently just...like that, to everyone who isn't Geralt but particularly to him. 

It really isn't fair. If she's going to treat him like competition, he ought to get to compete. But down that path of thought lies only lonely nights and sad songs, and it really had been a very nice day.

"When should we go?" Geralt is asking when Jaskier pays attention again.

"Today," Yennefer says. "Soon, I think, or at least before dusk. His power will grow when the moon comes out."

Which is how Jaskier ends up tagging along as they head for the wizard's estate at the edge of town. Yennefer shoots him a _look_ when he leaves with them instead of returning to his room, a look that clearly asks, _And what use, exactly, do you think you're going to be here?_

The answer, of course, is none, but he'll be damned if he misses seeing this. Whatever his personal feelings about Yennefer, she and Geralt fighting a mad wizard together is certain to be the stuff of legend—and, more importantly, of song.

—

It's a spectacular fight.

There's a grove of trees near where the wizard meets them that's perfect for hiding in but close enough to see everything, which is a rare luxury. Jaskier makes himself comfortable and invisible and watches intently.

If it had just been two against one, it wouldn't have taken ten seconds, wizard or no, not against Geralt and Yennefer together. But of course the wizard is ready for them, surrounded by various foul and weird-looking creatures that Geralt sets to fighting while Yennefer does—something with her hands that makes the wizard stagger, but not fall, not yet. She can't get close to him, but she shouts incantations in languages Jaskier doesn't even recognize—no Elder speech here, but something older and stranger that makes the air hum and glitter around her, and none of the bolts the wizard hurls hit home.

Jaskier quickly gathers that for whatever reason, Yennefer can't actually kill him—undoubtedly he has some sort of magical protection, but she can keep him off Geralt as he plows through the monsters, and it's truly a pleasure to watch, the way Geralt with a sword always is. Jaskier loses track of time as he watches, almost hypnotized by the graceful turns and strikes that happen so fast he can barely see them. By Yennefer, too, the ferocity lining her features as she casts spell after spell, the wind from nowhere whipping wildly at her hair and her dress. Even her voice seems to resonate with layers of sound that make him shiver, as though she had an unseen chorus at her back.

Finally the monsters lie dead, and the wizard is alone. Even at this distance Jaskier can read the fear on his face. He hurls some spell at Geralt, but Yennefer is too quick, and whatever it was dissolves in a flare of light halfway there.

Geralt doesn't take his time with him, though he could. He raises his sword, brings it down in one heavy stroke, and it's done.

And then suddenly—just as the old wizard falls—Geralt and Yennefer vanish.

Jaskier blinks. Rubs his eyes. It's still the same: the wizard lies on the ground in an unmoving heap, and where Geralt and Yennefer were standing is just...nothing. No, there's something, two little piles of something on the ground, but they're _gone._

He only waits a shocked second before running out of the woods and straight toward the space where they were. He sees the armor first, and then the swords—iron tucked into its sheath, silver lying on the ground where it was dropped. Next to it—he pulls up short, because there _are_ bodies there. They're just...smaller than they should be.

The bodies start to stir, and Jaskier forces himself to focus. It's two children, he realizes as they slowly sit up. They look about eight or nine, not that he's much judge of children's ages. One is a girl, dark-haired, in a shabby dress. The other is a boy. His clothes aren't much better, and his hair isn't much lighter than the girl's, but his eyes—

His eyes, Jaskier realizes with a distant sense of horror, are gold like a cat's. His mind makes one more valiant effort to keep from connecting the obvious dots and recognizing them, and then it finally does.

"How in the unholy fuck," Jaskier says to no one, "did this shit happen?"

He finally thinks to check if the mage is dead, but a quick glance at how much of his insides are now on the outside confirms that. So he's just left with...these children. Who are Geralt and Yennefer. And are not, judging by the terrified expressions on their faces, _his_ Geralt or Yennefer, as he is so privileged to know them in the present day.

"Uh, hello," he offers cautiously. He crouches down to be on their level, because you're supposed to do that with children, right?

Geralt quickly pushes himself up to standing, stumbling a little as he does. "Who are you?"

It's a child's voice, doing an imitation of an adult trying to sound stern. Not that bad of one, Jasker notes, but it still doesn't accomplish anything except to make the kid in front of him seem even more heartbreakingly small. 

"My name's Jaskier," he says, trying to keep his voice calm and soothing. "I'm—"

"Where am I?"

"We're in Ostiven. In Temeria," he adds, when Geralt's face shows no sign of recognition. At the mention of the province, though, his eyes widen.

"How—how did I get here so fast? That's hundreds of miles away."

"Um. From where, exactly?"

Geralt looks at him like he's stupid. "Kaer Morhen. You know, the place you took me from?"

"I didn't—hell. I might as well explain this to both of you at once." He glances at Yennefer, who has been slowly sitting up and watching him intently.

Geralt just looks like a smaller, considerably slimmer version, with childlike proportions and dark, slightly curly hair. Yennefer, on the other hand, has a hunch in her back and a crooked face. She's recognizable anyway, mostly because of her eyes, the same bottomless purple despite being filled with fear.

And she is afraid. He's _never_ seen Yennefer look afraid. It jars something inside him.

They're both waiting for him. "All right," he says finally, "so you may not believe me, depending on, uh, wherever you think you've just come from, but the fact is you're both _actually_ grown adults, like, adults several times over. And you're my friends—well, one of you is my friend, one of you is sort of an acquaintance—and you are not, actually, children," he finishes. "You just. Seem to think you are. And also to be physically very small and undeveloped. But you're _not._ " He stares back and forth between them. "Any of this ringing a bell? Anything at all?"

"You're mad," Yennefer murmurs. There's a hitch of fear in her voice, but she also seems to find his madness rather compelling.

"I think I'd know if I was grown," Geralt says, frowning deeply.

"Oh, this is not good," Jaskier mutters. If they don't remember _anything_...

Some kind of silent communication happens between them, and they shift to stand closer to each other, side by side. Like they're presenting a united front against a common enemy. The whole situation is rapidly getting out of hand, and Jaskier frantically racks his brain for some way to win them over, or at least calm them down.

"All right, I'll tell you the truth," he says, lowering his voice and trying to look as much like a Serious Adult as he can, "but you both have to promise to stay calm and listen to me. Okay?"

They nod. 

"So, some very bad things happened," he says. "I can't tell you what they were, not until you're older," he remembers hearing that quite a bit as a child, "but it means that your parents—or the people who, uh, who protect you," he adds quickly, not having the slightest idea if the people who raised Geralt did any protecting of him whatsoever, but it seems to go down the right way, "they can't protect you right now. They asked me to take care of you for a while. Okay?"

He watches them take this in, stomach twisting at how easy it is to lie to them.

"How come I don't remember leaving?" Geralt asks.

"It was magical," Jaskier says. "The bad thing that happened. It messed with people's minds. You'll probably start to remember soon," and dear gods, please let that be true. Or let them both go back to normal before he has to deal with it not happening.

He's so occupied watching the belief—and anxiety—creep into Geralt's eyes that he starts when Yennefer asks, in a painfully quiet voice, "Is my mom okay?"

"She's fine," Jaskier says. "She just...had to go somewhere for a little while. You'll see her again," he promises, which is certainly not true.

"And the other boys at Kaer Morhen?" Geralt chimes in. "And everyone else?"

"Everyone is fine. I promise. You both just need to be brave for a little while, okay?"

They look at each other before nodding solemnly. Jaskier feels an unfamiliar and briefly agonizing ache in his chest.

Fuck, he doesn't even _like_ kids that much. He's certainly no good with them. True, they're around the age some of his nieces and nephews had been when he left home, and he always got along fine with them, but he hadn't been in _charge_ of them, or in any way responsible for their safety and wellbeing.

"All right," he says encouragingly—to himself as much as to them—"let's get back to the inn. It's been a long day."

"It's only afternoon," Geralt points out. Trust him to be maddeningly contrary even as a child.

Thankfully, as it is in fact mid-afternoon, the inn's almost empty as Jaskier hurries them upstairs to their—well, his and Geralt's—room. He's made himself known over their stay so far, and coming back with his companions conspicuously absent and with two strange children in tow—especially if anybody's noticed Geralt's unusual eyes—well, he doubts anyone would figure out what had happened, but they'd certainly be suspicious.

He ought to sneak them out now, but where will they sleep tonight? The nearest town is only a day's travel, but it's further than they can get before dark. He's camped alone before, but with two kids to worry about...

They can leave tomorrow morning, he decides. Nice and early, when there's no one about. They'll make it to the next town before suppertime, and then—well, he'll figure out what comes next. He's good at that.

He sets Geralt's armor and swords down on the chair with a grunt of relief. It had seemed wrong to ask the child version of Geralt to help carry them—although, Jaskier realizes with a swell of dismay, if he's been through the mutations that turned his eyes yellow, there's a good chance he's already strong enough. Something about that just seems wrong.

"We'll stay here tonight," he tells them. "Tomorrow we have to leave, but we'll have some nice supper tonight and, uh. Get to know each other?" 

First Geralt, then Yennefer sit down on the other bed. They look more than anything like prisoners on their way to execution, facing their fates with grim resolve. All his attempts to get them talking fall flat, and for a minute they all just stare at each other, Jaskier feeling increasingly frantic as the silence presses in.

"Tell you what," he says finally. "How about a little music?"

He doesn't want to sing any of his own songs, because singing about Geralt to the child version feels...weird. He settles on "False Sir John," on the theory that _his_ favorite songs when he was their age all involved death.

Somewhere around the aforementioned false knight ordering a woman to strip off her fancy dress before being murdered—" _For it's too fine and costly, to rot in the sea with you_ "—he wonders if he's made a mistake. But one look at their faces shows they're rapt. It makes him preen a little; he always knew Geralt liked his singing, hollow protestations aside.

He supposes, after what they've been through so far—well, what Geralt's been through; Yennefer certainly seems damaged by something but he has no idea what—a little musical murder is nothing. And the threatened maiden triumphs, in the end, tricking old John into turning his back so she can shove him over the cliff. Yennefer brightens when he gets to that part.

" _And the eighth has drownded thee,_ " he sings, finishing with a little vocal flourish, " _and the eighth...has drownded...thee._ "

The last note is barely gone from the air when Yennefer pipes up, "Play another one." It's not quite bold enough to be a demand, but it's certainly not a request. 

He'll do anything for an appreciative audience, and she doesn't look scared anymore. So he goes into the opening bars of "The Maid on the Shore," followed by "The Wind and the Rain," and another, and another.

He only leaves them once, to ask at the bar for three meals sent up. He almost orders two, then thinks better of it; with his luck Geralt's more-than-man-sized appetite will be intact. Parting with the coin gives him a pang. He has a decent amount saved, at the moment—more, counting what Geralt has stored in Roach's saddlebag—but he knows from long experience how fast it goes, and everything at the moment feels perilously uncertain. He _hopes_ whatever this is—a curse, a spell—will reverse itself quickly, or that he can at least hunt down a mage who can break it. If they're stuck like this...

It doesn't bear thinking about, so he doesn't think about it. Outside the door, though, he pauses, hearing voices and deferring to his natural, sneaky instincts.

"—you trust him?" one of them says. Their voices are less distinct when they're this size, but it sounds like Geralt.

"I don't know," the other one—Yennefer—says. "I just...I think he's good."

"But are you sure?"

Jaskier waits, holding his breath.

"No," Yennefer says. Then, "We should be careful."

They fall silent as Jaskier enters the room. He feels suddenly very, very lonely.

—

At least at the next town, the three of them can be seen together. Jaskier thinks to ask the innkeeper after some clothing for the children, with a story about losing his little cousins' bags in a river. Granted, there's not much of a family resemblance, but "cousins" covers a lot of ground, and she doesn't seem to doubt him.

"I've got a box of rags left over from my little ones," she tells him. "Can't part with anything for free, you understand, but I'll cut you a bargain, if you want."

The clothes she brings up are worn, but they're more than rags, and the price is fair. Jaskier thanks her heartily. 

"By the way," he asks, "is there a mage in this town? Or a sorceress. Or a hedge witch, even." He tries to keep the note of urgency out of his voice. "Any magic user at all, really."

The barmaid says, "Well, there's old Madge, if you want a love spell or a good luck charm."

It's not exactly the calibre of help he's hoping for, but beggars can't be choosers. He drops off their belongings and sees to Roach before leading Geralt and Yennefer down the road to the edge of town. They don't ask any questions, but Yennefer's hand clutches his tightly. When he tells them to wait outside, it takes a second for her to let go.

"I'll be right out," he promises. "Holler if you need anything."

Old Madge isn't as old as all that—he'd guess late fifties, her hair gray through and through but her back upright. She gives the children an assessing glance, then ushers Jaskier inside.

"That's some damned powerful magic," she says.

"Yes," Jaskier says. "I know. Can you fix it?"

"I doubt it. They've been drained of their life energy. That's what stole the years away."

His heart sinks. 'Drained' does not sound good. "Can you—I don't know, put it back?"

"Maybe, if it's still out there. Whatever took it stopped before they ran out, so there's a chance. Cost you a pretty penny, if I can."

"I'll pay anything," he says immediately. He shouldn't—desperation is a bad bargaining position—but he can't help himself.

She eyes him, amused. "Not a very smart thing to say to a witch," she says, "but as it happens, I just want gold."

She sits down at the table and shakes some salt into one hand, then dips the other into a small bowl of water and closes her eyes. Nothing seems outwardly to happen, but Jaskier can feel the tingling energy gathering, the air humming with strong magic. It's like what he felt around Yennefer, he realizes, when she summoned the djinn. Like the air in a lightning storm.

After a minute she opens her eyes. "It's out there," she says, "but it's nowhere near. I couldn't get ahold of it."

Somehow he knew it wouldn't be this easy, but the disappointment is still overwhelming. Who knows how long it'll be before he next finds an amenable mage? Weeks, maybe even a month. He's pretty sure he can't handle another month of this.

He doesn't even have it in him to protest when Madge demands a few orens for her time. "Come on," he says to the kids. "Let's head back, all done here." He can tell that they hear the weariness in his voice—are all children this terrifyingly observant?—but they only trudge after him silently, Yennefer's small hand worming its way into his.

—

Without an immediate fix on hand, Jaskier honestly doesn't know what to do except what he normally does when he's not following Geralt: ply his trade, town to town, until he gets a good offer for a court event or a seasonal residency. Not that he'll be able to take anyone up on such, with two mystery children in tow, but for the moment he can't think what else to _do._ Clinging to normalcy seems like the only option until a solution presents itself. And anyway, for all he knows, the magic could wear off at any time. Lots of spells work like that, don't they? Maybe if he just—leaves it alone, he'll wake up one morning and everything will be back the way it should be.

Luckily, they're in a fairly populated area, so it's never more than a long day's ride (or walk, in his case, because he's not enough of a bastard to ride all day while the children trudge beside him) to the next village or town. Also luckily, Jaskier has a faint memory of the horse-related education that comes standard for children of lesser nobles, and he soon gets used to caring for Roach each night. She's remarkably patient with his clumsy ministrations, and it's not long before he picks up Geralt's habit of talking to her. He never felt the need to, before, because he could just talk to Geralt.

(Said talking consists of about equal parts apologies for his ineptitude at horse care, little songs composed in her honor, and all the small daily complaints that he can't share as freely anymore as he's been accustomed to doing. She's a good audience. He sees why Geralt does it.)

The singing, meanwhile, becomes a habit, or maybe a kind of ritual. Every evening, he brings three meals up to the room where they're staying, then heads downstairs alone to try his luck. He doesn't want to be recognized, because people might ask questions, so he sticks to classic tunes instead of his signature pieces. It means he doesn't make as much, but at least he feels relatively normal for a couple hours. He can pretend that he and Geralt parted ways as they normally do, and he's travelling alone and free, just waiting for the next opportunity.

Then he gathers what few coins he's earned, goes upstairs, and sings to Geralt and Yennefer. He works his way through all the murder ballads he can think of, and the ghost stories—"The Unquiet Grave" is a massive hit, relatively speaking, because he catches Yennefer humming it the next day.

They're the quietest audience he's ever played for. They sit next to each other, Yennefer leaning on Geralt's shoulder, and watch him like ghosts. Usually he can at least get Yennefer to smile, eventually. Geralt just sort of stares, but he listens quietly, so Jaskier assumes he's enjoying it.

In this way the days pass, and Jaskier waits for something to happen—for something to change, for them to change back, for a bolt of lightning from the sky that will show him how to fix this.

He's still waiting when, in the fourth town they stop at, Geralt runs away.

Jaskier wakes up one morning and he's gone, and it's not like there's a lot of places to hide in a single bedroom. He turns to Yennefer, panic edging his voice. "Did he tell you where he was going?"

She bites her lip.

"Damn it," Jaskier shouts, and immediately hates himself for the way she shrinks away. He takes a deep breath and tries again. "Please. I need to find him. Where is he?"

"I don't know," Yennefer says, looking agonized. "He asked me to come, but...I was too scared."

After a few more choice curses, he sets off on Roach to search the roads out of town, and only just barely catches up with Geralt and hauls him back. (It turns out that while he's decidedly stronger than the average kid, Jaskier can still, just barely, drag him onto a horse he doesn't want to be on. Because Jaskier lives a lean life on the road, and he is in excellent shape, and also Geralt is currently, mutations aside, four and a half feet tall.)

"Where were you even _going,_ " he mutters, swinging awkwardly up onto Roach behind the hunched-over child sharing the saddle. 

"Home," Geralt says, looking miserable. "I want to go home."

Jaskier has nothing to say to that.

That night Geralt sulks around even more silently than usual, glancing at Jaskier over and over until he feels like he's got spinach stuck between his teeth. At last he asks, warily, "What? What is it?"

Geralt seems relieved by the attention, then perplexed by the question. "'m sorry," he mutters. "I just...when are you going to punish me?"

" _What?_ "

"I disobeyed you," Geralt says, as if it's the most logical thing in the world. "I'm supposed to be punished."

"Wh—how?"

He shrugs. "A whipping, usually. And extra chores. Sometimes I don't get supper."

Jaskier is very careful not to let even a little of the rage that washes over him show on his face. It's hardly anything out of the ordinary, what Geralt is talking about. Jaskier certainly received his share of cuffs on the head as a boy. But now that he has a child—after a fashion—he can't fathom even the notion of raising a hand to him. Certainly not sending him away to be beaten by a fortress full of cold strangers, motherless and so gods-damned _small._

And that's where Geralt wants to get back to, he realizes, feeling sick. Because he doesn't—didn't—have anything else.

"There won't be any more punishments," he says. "At least, not while you're with me. Although I would appreciate it if you'd obey me anyway," he adds, "because it will make life considerably easier for us both."

Something in Geralt's posture eases, although he still looks somewhere between suspicious and confused. "No punishment?"

"You can even have dessert," Jaskier promises. The tiny half-smile he gets in return feels like his heart is going to burst. "That goes for you too," he says to Yennefer, who has been watching silently, as usual, from where she's curled up on the bed. She's been there since he barked at her to stay put before he ran out in a panic to track down Geralt, and he feels no small amount of guilt looking at her. "Desserts all round."

As it turns out, the best the inn has to offer is some bread pudding with raisins and honey, but they both devour it like it was the food of the gods. 

—

He starts to get to know them, a little. It's weird to think of it that way, but they're essentially strangers, all the years he's spent with Geralt erased and this changeling left in his place for Jaskier to awkwardly become acquainted with.

Not that he's so different, stature aside. Actually, the similarities are what hurt the most, like when Geralt follows him to the stables one evening and says, with his chest puffed out a little, "I'm good with horses."

Jaskier is in the middle of currying Roach, but he pauses. "Is that so?"

"The stablemaster said so," Geralt says. "He said I picked up what to do faster than any of the other boys." He shifts from foot to foot, glancing at Roach eagerly. Waiting for permission, Jaskier realizes with a twinge. 

"To tell you the truth," he says, lowering his voice confidentially, "I could use the help."

Geralt smiles—the first real one Jaskier's seen from him. From then on they tend to Roach together, Geralt brushing and caring for all the parts he can reach while Jaskier puts out her feed and water. He always leaves them alone for a bit, carefully not listening to whatever Geralt whispers to her. 

(He sort of misses his own chats with Roach, but no matter.)

Yes, Geralt is recognizable. It hurts to look at him, sometimes, but he makes _sense;_ if Jaskier had tried, before, to imagine Geralt this young he'd probably have come up with something approaching reality. But Yennefer...there's that eerie sameness about the eyes, true, but—he had no idea. He's never, actually, given any thought to Yennefer's childhood. If anything, he assumed she'd sprung forth full grown and terrifying out of the earth.

"My mother used to sing to me," she tells him one night as he's putting his lute away. She's tucked herself in next to Geralt, same as always, her body curled around the pillow like a comma. Jaskier, who finished singing some time ago and has just been noodling out the beginnings of a quiet tune, had thought she was asleep.

"That's nice," he says, because he doesn't really know what to say. But it seems like she just wanted to tell him; her eyes close and soon her breathing slows and evens out.

 _Used to,_ he thinks. If she's even ten years old he'll eat his lute.

He wants to ask her why her mother stopped singing. He wants to ask her so many questions, but—except when he's singing—she's skittish, almost as much as Geralt. There comes a night when he sort of forgets that his traveling companions are children, or maybe he's just too tired and lonely to care, and starts complaining about the atrocious hospitality in that particular inn—overcharged for bad food, booed offstage for a _perfectly fine_ rendition of "The Demon Lover," maybe not his most inspired ever but certainly not objectionable, _and_ he'd had to pay extra for oats for Roach.

"And the stable isn't even properly insulated!" He paces the floor of their small room as he complains. It makes him feel more like himself than he has in ages. "So I pay through the nose, and meanwhile the poor girl is out there _freezing_ her fetlocks off—" 

He gestures, when he gets excited. He's never thought about this as a problem before. But this time, when his hand swings out to punctuate his sentence, Yennefer—it doesn't come close to hitting her. He'd _notice_ if it did. But it's close enough to make her flinch and duck, and the rest of Jaskier's rant dies in his throat.

"Sorry," he says—quietly, wholly inadequately. Next to her, Geralt has stood up abruptly, his body tense and ready. "I wasn't...I wouldn't hurt you."

She shrugs, relaxing. "I know." Which is apparently the end of it, but Jaskier lies awake for a long time that night, anger simmering uselessly in his stomach along with no small measure of confusion—and guilt, not for frightening her but because he _knows_ that Yennefer, the real Yennefer, would sooner die than let him learn any of this. He doesn't know how he's going to look her in the eye when she turns back.

If she turns back. If either of them do.

He's trying not to think about that.

—

He finally gives in and takes them to Oxenfurt when the money gets low, although that isn't why. Wandering from town to town, hiding out in shabby rooms at one inn and then another—it's no life for a child, even a hopefully temporary magical one. It's why he's been sympathetic to Geralt's insistent refusal to go collect his Child Surprise, despite pushing him now and then to at least check up on it. He can't keep dragging them around like this; it's wearing on them, preternaturally tough as they both are.

They're young enough to pass off as his own, and his reputation is such that no one will doubt it (except possibly the part where he's taking responsibility for them all of a sudden, but given that he _actually is_ doing that, he can probably give a pretty convincing performance).

The journey won't be terribly long, but it will mean a few nights of camping out. Since he is not Geralt, he won't be able to wander into the woods and rustle up dinner. It's possible Geralt in his current state might be able to, but as he's currently barely taller than his own sword, Jaskier isn't going to bet on it, so he spends the last of his own coin on supplies. (He hasn't touched Geralt's own stash yet. Geralt has always been generous enough with his money, but it feels...wrong, somehow, now that he's not exactly here.) Life will be cheaper in Oxenfurt anyway, where has rooms and meals free of charge and a standing invitation to perform, lecture, and more or less do what he will. 

Something about it feels final, as if he's resigning himself to never fixing this. It's not true—if anything, he'll have more access to magical help there. He can call in favors and send for court mages, writing letters on proper stationery, and they'll actually come. But just the act of making accommodations for the situation makes it feel more permanent.

He's always wanted to show Geralt around Oxenfurt someday. But he wanted _his_ Geralt, who would roll his eyes and grunt as Jaskier led him around and then, at the least expected moment, make some sly joke at Jaskier's expense that showed he'd been paying attention all along.

Fuck, Jaskier misses him so _much._ He's starting to realize that all the lying platitudes he's told himself over the years about how _at least you have his friendship, that's the most important thing_ weren't really lies, at least not entirely. Because right now he'd give up any chance at Geralt ever returning his feelings—he'd give up the feelings themselves, tear them out of himself and throw them away like garbage—for one more chance to share a fire with Geralt and chatter meaninglessly into its glow, to hear Geralt's quiet hums of acknowledgment and occasional even quieter chuckles, to break bread with him and bandage his wounds while he grumbles that he doesn't need it and eavesdrop on his conversations with Roach and just be his _friend_ again, and not—whatever he is now, to whoever Geralt is now. 

He wants his friend back, and he can't bring himself to hate the children for it but sometimes—just for a moment, now and then—he still does, a little.

It doesn't help, of course, being angry at them. It just makes him feel guilty. But he's never exactly been in charge of his own emotions, so it's not like he can start now.

Instead he lies out under the stars with them on either side of him and points out constellations, telling them the old stories about the seven weeping sisters, and the rabbit who saved a queen's life, and the wandering son of this or that god, and answering the questions they shyly ask. Less shy now, though, than they used to be. He supposes he can at least be proud of that. He doesn't know what he is to them, but he seems to be doing an okay job at it nonetheless.

A small comfort, on the nights he misses Geralt so much his chest aches and his throat stings, but he'll take what he can get.

—

He introduces them around Oxenfurt as his children (the 'illegitimate' part he tactfully leaves unstated), and he doesn't think to give them fake names until the first person asks, "Geralt? Like your White Wolf?"

At which point he stammers, "No, no, pure coincidence, I assure you," and then it's too late. But aside from that awkward moment—repeated ad nauseam and putting him on edge every time—everyone seems to take him at his word. He has two additional smaller beds brought to his rooms, and that seems to be that.

It's not until maybe the fourth or fifth introduction, that he starts to notice how people look at Yennefer. Just looks, mostly, until the day that Borys Randolph, who was in his class at the Academy, pays him a visit.

"It's good to have you back, Jaskier," Borys says, clasping his arm for a shake. "Will you be staying long? Had enough of adventure and roaming the continent?"

"Oh, just a few months, most likely," Jaskier says, though he honestly has no idea. "There's no such thing as enough adventure."

Borys laughs. "Ah, but from what I hear, you're not such a free old bird as you used to be. Where are you hiding those bastards of yours?" 

Something in his voice puts Jaskier on edge, but right at that moment Borys's eyes seize on the doorway where Geralt's head is leaning into view.

"Hah, there's one of them," he says. "You sure he's yours? Doesn't look much like you."

"Yes, well, I'm sure," Jaskier says, a little nettled despite himself. Of course Geralt _isn't_ his, but it's an unkind suggestion nonetheless. "Look, why don't you—"

Yennefer materializes next to Geralt, her eyes bright and curious. She's been enjoying meeting so many new people, though she tends to get shy after the first introductions.

"And another one!" Borys booms, and then makes a face. "I can see why her mother didn't want _that_ one around."

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Geralt bristling, and he feels a cold, helpless fury, not so much at the words themselves as at the way Yennefer doesn't even react except to lower her head a little, obviously used to it. " _I_ want her," he snaps, his voice pure ice. "And you should leave."

(It's almost a week later that she sidles up to him and asks, chin stuck out bravely, "Do you _really_ want me here?"

"Darling," Jaskier tells her, "if I could, I'd keep you with me until you were all grown up."

The surprise in her eyes makes his heart hurt. "I'm not strong like Geralt, though."

"Be that as it may," he says, "you are excellent company. And good company is worth more than gold.")

—

It causes him untold anxiety to let them out of his sight, but as unnaturally quiet and cooperative as they are, they're _children._ He can't keep them confined to his rooms all day; it would be like keeping a bird in a cage. So he shoves down the panicky voice inside and gives them free rein of the campus. "And anywhere within the city walls," he adds, "if you have someone with you. Someone _besides_ each other."

Geralt frowns. "But I don't know anyone else."

"Well," Jaskier tells him, forcing brightness into his voice, "you'll just have to make some friends, then, won't you?"

Geralt seems to regard this prospect with deep suspicion. "I'll try," he says finally. "But if they're..." He glances at Yennefer, who is currently absorbed in stroking the bed linens with deep fascination (in fairness, they are of a much higher thread count than the inns they've been staying at). "If they're _mean,_ " he says pointedly, and Jaskier nods.

"Then you have my permission to punch them, of course. As hard as you can."

" _Yeah,_ " Geralt agrees, smiling a little viciously. 

It only takes a few days for the three of them to develop a routine. They breakfast with Jaskier; he's happy to find that his meager but adequate egg-frying skills remain intact after so long without practice. Then the children leave, and Jaskier goes to a performance, or a lecture, or the library, or just for a stroll down the familiar, unchanged streets. They usually come home for lunch, sometimes together, sometimes one after the other, and they eat in the dining hall with the students and the professors, who throng around them at first to see the great Jaskier and his bastards returned. Eventually that stops, thank the gods, and it's just one or two friends who stop by—other bards picking his brain about lyrics they can't make work, most often, which is always fun. 

Then the children go out again, and Jaskier tries to write. It's harder than it used to be, of course, now that he doesn't have a steady stream of Geralt's adventures as fodder. But he is a classically trained bard, and he's _good_ at this, damn it. He's _famous_ for this.

Okay, he's mostly famous for singing about Geralt. But that's simply not an option anymore. He does perform those songs sometimes, because people expect it, and they're safe here so he can. But he doesn't enjoy it like he used to. Singing Geralt's name just worsens the steady ache of missing him that's always, always present.

At least, he tells himself, the children are happy. More and more, when they make their way back home for supper, they're full of stories—people they met, stray cats they played with, little child-treasures they found, like a particularly shiny rock or a leaf shaped like a woman. They're—the only word he can think of is _blossoming,_ and he consoles himself that at least he's doing right by them.

It isn't much consolation, as the days pass by.

—

His second morning in Oxenfurt, Jaskier starts writing letters. He writes to everyone he knows at court—any court—to ask them to put in a good word for him with their sorceresses and court mages. While he waits for those letters to make their way to their recipients, he consults with the mages at the academy, healers and academics both.

Neither yields much of use. One after another, they visit and wave their hands over the children and squint, and every time it's the same.

"Their energy has been drained," says the fourth one (and the third, and the second, and the first). "It's not gone, though. It's—"

"Out there somewhere," Jaskier says wearily, "yes, I know, thanks. I don't suppose you can _find_ it?"

Then he writes to the sorceresses, emphasizing what a fascinating and tangled intellectual problem awaits them should they drop by for a visit. There's no point offering money, but he once overheard Yennefer mention to Geralt how utterly bored she'd been in her former post, so it seems the best tack to take. And after that...well, there's nothing to do but wait.

—

One by one, the sorceresses arrive. 

One by one, they leave.

At least, Jaskier thinks bitterly, none of them ask to be paid for their time.

—

When Geralt finally asks, "Why do you keep having wizards look at us?" Jaskier's mind goes blank for a second. 

Finally he comes up with, "They're trying to help get your memories back," and he's pretty sure Geralt doesn't buy it but he also doesn't protest any further. He's been in Oxenfurt about a month by this point, and it's astonishing how fast his edges have softened. He's still quieter than any other child Jaskier has ever met, but the constant suspicion in his eyes has been replaced by a brightening curiosity. He watches a fencing exhibition on the main quad and comes back bubbling over with excited commentary, so much so that Jaskier asks him—not really thinking about it, just thinking that it might make him happy—if he'd like to take lessons.

"Can I?" he asks, looking suddenly hesitant. "Only, Vesemir said I should wait until I'm a little bigger, so I don't pick up bad habits."

"Well, _I_ say it's fine and of course you can," Jaskier says firmly, and is rewarded with a somewhat-less-rare-these-days grin of delight. 

He sets Geralt up with a child-size sword and kit and arranges for private lessons from one of the swordmasters—a younger man, not someone Jaskier remembers from his student days, but he seems kind. (The man who had taught Jaskier what fencing basics he'd managed to learn, back when he was thirteen and only Julian still and resentful of having to learn fencing, had not been kind, or young, and had been in the habit of thwacking Jaskier across the fingers with his rapier to adjust his grip. He's hoping Geralt will have a better experience.)

Geralt takes to it immediately, and soon Jaskier can find him practicing moves in the alley behind their rooms at every spare moment. He learns fast, and he _moves_ fast, and the first time Jaskier comes to watch him in a student exhibition he's struck dumb with how much Geralt looks like—like _himself,_ when he fights. Sure, there's a studied kind of precision to the sparring that would look out of place in true combat, and he isn't landing blows with his full strength, but the speed of each turn and parry—the graceful economy of motion, without a single wasted twitch of muscle—

By the end of Geralt's match Jaskier's throat feels swollen and sore from the lump in it, and his hands are clenched into fists by his side as he tries to calm down. _I miss him,_ he thinks, and it's all he can think, as the next match blurs by and the one after that: _I miss him, I **miss** him,_ letting it crest and slowly fade. By the time the exhibition is over and Geralt runs over to him grinning eagerly, face open and hopeful, Jaskier is fine again. He hugs him, just a quick embrace—Geralt doesn't really care for being hugged, still—and says, "That was amazing. You were so good!"

"I've been practicing a lot," Geralt says, beaming but also, now that he's actually being praised, a little shy. "Master Gilbert says I'm fast but I rely on it too much. He says I shouldn't forget to work on my fundamentals."

"You were _so good,_ " Jaskier firmly repeats, and gives in to the urge to ruffle Geralt's hair, and doesn't dissolve into stupid tears even a little bit.

—

It's not until he pushes open the door to the herbalist's shop and physically flinches away from the jingle of the bell that Jaskier realizes he may be more hungover than he thought.

He's been drinking a little more heavily these days than he used to, which he really doesn't think he can be blamed for, but he hasn't gotten _drunk_ since they arrived. It didn't seem responsible, with two small children to care for, and more than that, he didn't exactly trust himself around them. Not that he thought he'd hurt them—never—but the thoughts that he stifles, sometimes, when he looks at Geralt, the sadness he's constantly biting back...they don't need to hear any of that.

Except yesterday, like the fool he is, he'd gotten his hopes up. There'd been a visiting magical scholar, someone who specialized—so Jaskier heard—in energy transference. He didn't exactly know what that was, but it _sounded_ like what all the others had told him the problem was, and when Jaskier had pulled the man aside to ask for a hypothetical consultation, explaining the problem all the other sorcerers had run into, he'd seemed excited to take a crack at it. 

He hadn't needed to bother the children, at least—just hovered his hands over their empty beds while his eyes rolled back in his head and Jaskier watched awkwardly. But in the end, the only difference had been a longer and more detailed explanation of why he couldn't, unfortunately, accomplish fuck all.

So Jaskier had thanked him, and seen him out, and waited for the children to go to bed, and proceeded to drink as much liquor as he could fit in his body before his hands stopped being able to hold the bottle. Thank the gods, he'd awoken in the early morning—still quite drunk, but able to pry himself up off the floor and vomit into a basin instead of all over himself. Then he'd crawled into bed and fallen back asleep, grateful that Geralt and Yennefer would find him there and not on the kitchen floor. 

Now it's almost noon, the children are out doing—whatever it is they do—and Jaskier is standing in the doorway of Grazina, the foremost herbalist in Oxenfurt, who dispensed to him many a hangover cure in his wilder student days, wincing at the sound of a bell. She takes one look at him and clucks disapprovingly.

"You look rotten," she tells him. "You're too old to be drinking so hard, you know."

"I entirely agree," he says, and shuffles inside. It's a little darker in here, and he realizes he's been squinting, and un-squints. "And yet I seem to have done it nevertheless, and thus require your assistance."

She rolls her eyes, already assembling ingredients. Grazina's cures always work best when they're fresh, and he waits, head pounding, as she mixes and muddles. 

"You shouldn't be drinking anyway," she says, "now that you've got those little ones."

"I know. I _know._ I feel very bad about it, I promise."

"Well," she says, and pours it all into a glass, "mind I don't see you here again, then. Or you won't be able to buy this—" She hands him the glass. "—for love nor money, not until you learn your lesson."

He toasts to her (all too plausible) threat and downs the green liquid in one long swallow. Almost instantly the tight vines of pain locked around his skull slow their throbbing, and his mouth feels less dry. The full effect will take time; for now he just savors the slight improvement.

"Grazina," he says solemnly, "you are an angel among women. Let me marry you and give you the life of luxury that you deserve."

She throws a cork at him, pegging him directly between the eyes. "Be off with you. Oh, but wait! Before you go..." She goes to the windowsill on the far wall, the one packed with little pots and curling green tendrils shooting out leaves, and takes one—a little ceramic pot that just fits in her hand with a tall shoot sprouting out of its dirt.

When she hands it to him, it takes him a moment to put his hand out. "This is...for me?"

"It's for Yennefer," Grazina says. "It's one of the seedlings she's been tending. It's far enough along now she can take it home and plant it."

He's still hungover enough that thinking takes some time. "For Yennefer," he repeats stupidly. "She was here?"

"Oh, she comes by every day, just about," Grazina says, and smiles. "She's terribly bright, and she's got a real mind for herbalism. You must be proud."

"Huh," Jaskier says, clutching the small pot. "I mean. Yes, I am."

—

He gives the seedling to Yennefer over lunch. "Grazina said this was for you?"

She takes it quickly and a bright smile flashes across her face as she delicately pets the green shoot. "It's my mugwort! I didn't think it would grow this well."

"Do you spend a lot of time with Grazina?" Jaskier asks. He doesn't mean it to sound accusatory, but a shadow falls across Yennefer's face anyway. She holds the pot closer to her body.

"I like it," she says. "She's teaching me everything about plants and medicine and—and she says I'm good at it."

"Yes, that's what she told me," he says, and smiles. "She said you were very bright."

This seems to bolster Yennefer's courage a bit. "It's okay, isn't it?" she asks. "That I'm learning from Grazina?"

It sounds like a request for permission. A month ago, maybe it would have been. But Jaskier recognizes the glint in her eyes. Even if he wanted to forbid her, she'd keep going. And anyway, he doesn't.

"Of course it's okay," he says. "Now how would you like to go plant this in the garden? We can clear out a corner for you, just for your seedlings."

They do exactly that. Well, Yennefer does most of it; Jaskier prefers getting his hands dirty in less literal senses and doesn't have the first clue of what to do with soil, flowers, seeds, or the like. Yennefer explains everything as she goes, and he marvels at her confidence.

Over the coming weeks, the little corner grows, sprouting more and more herbs, including at least one that Jaskier's fairly sure is a deadly poison. (He convinces her to move that one to a larger pot inside, so it doesn't get mixed up with the others accidentally.) The herbs grow, and Yennefer tends them, and despite himself he _does_ feel proud of her, even knowing he has no right to it at all.

He feels even prouder when she drags home a thick botany book and starts asking him to read her the captions. She repeats after him under her breath, tracing the words with a finger, and it doesn't take long to realize that she's teaching herself to read.

The thought pains him, in a way, because he really should have arranged some sort of education for them before this. He's been putting it off in the same way he's been putting off asking the housing clerk for new quarters where the children can have their own room, hoping against hope that each new day could be the last. But there keep being more days, and the bitter taste of disappointment coats the back of his throat even as he beams at Yennefer and praises her when she gets a word without his help.

"You know," he says, "I could get you something a little easier to practice on."

"I like this," she says, clutching the botany book more tightly, as if she's afraid he might take it away. "It's _interesting._ "

He's certain, at least, that Geralt can read already; Jaskier has found him with his nose in one of Jaskier's books more than once, and he doesn't even move his mouth as he reads. It almost makes him feel more guilty for not sending him to school, because he's pretty sure Geralt would enjoy it.

He assuages the guilt by taking Geralt to a bookshop one morning, while Yennefer is off at Grazina's. He doesn't tell him where they're going, just to enjoy the look on his face when they stop in front of the shop, his tentative smile widening as he stares hungrily at the open books in the window. 

Jaskier has to nudge him across the threshold, but once he's inside he wanders around entranced, trailing his fingers over the spine of every book he passes. One seems to catch his attention, and he pauses. "Can I—"

"Go ahead," Jaskier says. "Give it a look."

It's a book of old Elven stories—which goddess's tears made the rivers, why the willow bends, that sort of thing. Geralt handles it with a delicate touch, but he obviously wants to devour the whole thing right there in the shop.

"I've never seen a book like this before," he says, almost to himself, after a minute of paging through it.

"You read a lot of books, didn't you?" Jaskier asks. "At Kaer Morhen?"

"Not stories," Geralt says. "We mostly just read about monsters and making potions and things like that." His fingers trace reverently over the details of the woodcut illustrations. "Witcher things."

"Right," Jaskier echoes, "witcher things." The mention of his former duties seems to make Geralt a little tense, as mention of his life before Jaskier always does, and Jaskier hurries to distract him before he sinks into morose thought.

"Why don't we take it home so you can read it there? You'll be more comfortable than here on the floor."

With wide eyes, Geralt looks up at him. "I can keep it?"

"You can keep it," Jaskier confirms. "Just let me go buy it first." Illustrated books like that are pricey, but he has money to spare these days. Geralt clutches the tome to his chest the whole way home. That afternoon, he and Yennefer both stay in and Geralt reads story after story to her, two small heads bent over the page. Jaskier sits across the room, and listens, and composes the best new tune he's written in weeks. 

—

It's a few days later that Geralt finds him after a songwriting workshop, lingering around the doorway to the classroom until Jaskier looks up and notices him and smiles.

"Hello there," he says, closing his notebook. "Did you finish helping Maranna unpack those crates?"

Geralt nods, still hovering in the doorway until Jaskier beckons him in. Then he walks a few steps and sits down on the edge of a bench, perched like he might need to spring up at any moment.

"Did she give you something nice for your troubles?"

Another nod. He hasn't been this quiet in ages.

"You don't look like someone who just enjoyed a free sweet roll," Jaskier says. "Come on, come here," but he goes to Geralt, sitting next to him, not touching but close, the way the boy prefers. "What's wrong?" 

It takes long enough for Geralt to answer that he really starts to worry. He runs down the list of things Geralt could possibly be upset about—the other boys haven't caused him any trouble since he punched the new one who kept making fun of his eyes; he's finally been eating as much as he actually wants to at mealtimes; he came second in the fencing tournament last week but he hadn't been upset about it; and Yennefer, of whom Geralt remains fiercely protective, hasn't been having any problems with anyone lately, as far as Jaskier knows.

Finally Geralt says, in a painfully small voice, "Am I going to go back home soon?" He sneaks a glance at Jaskier before looking back down again.

"Uh," Jaskier says, and thinks that after almost three months he should have expected this but absolutely did not. "Why do you ask?"

"I know—I know I'm not...what you told us, when we first met you," Geralt says. "It was the truth, wasn't it?"

He's suspected for a while, that they've realized. Neither of them have ever brought it up, but it's not like they could fail to notice all the little signs—Geralt especially, who has some knowledge of the world, if only from books and stories. Hell, the year is different, and there's no way to reconcile something like that. But they've seemed happy enough to just settle into their new lives, and Jaskier hadn't wanted to spoil that by asking questions.

"It was the truth," he confirms.

"But if I'm—like this. If I'm young, that's where I should be. It's where I'm supposed to be. And...I miss it, sometimes. I miss Eskel, and the others." The expression on his face—torn, but determined—is so adult it's almost comical. But not quite.

"Do you...want to go back? To Kaer Morhen?" Not that there's a damned thing either of them can do about it if he does; hell, Jaskier doesn't even know if the place is still standing. It feels important to ask, though.

For a long moment Geralt is silent, his small body almost vibrating with tension. Finally he meets Jaskier's eyes and shakes his head, shame twisting his face.

"Then you don't have to," Jaskier tells him.

Geralt stares at him, eyes wide. "I don't? But..." He's gawping like a fish, apparently unable to process this revelation. Then another shadow falls across his face. "But I don't have anywhere else to go..."

"You can stay here with me," Jaskier says, a fist clenching tight around his heart. "As long as you like."

Geralt flies into his arms hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Jaskier wraps his arms around him and concentrates on not shaking to pieces.

There is a similar conversation with Yennefer two days later, because Geralt tells her everything. She doesn't hug him, but a broad smile breaks out across her face—the kind he rarely sees even these days, when she smiles a lot—and it makes her actually look young rather than just wounded and perilously small.

Not long after, without ever quite deciding to, Jaskier stops looking for a cure.

—

Maybe this was supposed to happen, he thinks late at night, listening to their low, paired, even breaths. Maybe the universe, which he has only ever known to be cruel or at best disinterested, is trying to set right the wrongs they suffered, give them both another chance to grow up happier and less tortured. Neither of them would have chosen it, but—they're _happy_ here. And if Jaskier isn't, quite—if some part of him still flinches every time he looks at Geralt and doesn't see _Geralt,_ if he withers a little every time he turns down an opportunity that he once would have jumped at because it would take him too far away for too long, if he misses his life and his best friend and even Yennefer, sometimes, who he barely knew before, misses it all so much that some nights he can't breathe—

He loves them. He loves them both so much it aches, and he can't think of a single thing he wouldn't give up to keep watching them grow.

—

He gets almost two more months.

Two people are found dead in two separate alleys, and rumors spread that it wasn't someone who killed them but something. Jaskier hears the talk, and he warns the children to be careful, but it all seems rather distant. It's the kind of thing that would happen in his old life, the kind of thing he used to write songs about and doesn't anymore.

He writes love ballads now, and tales of brave knights, and ribald confections that get the crowd going. He's been toying with the idea of an epic cycle, maybe something about the Lionesses of Cintra. And he sings folk songs, still, to the children, though not as often these days, only when Yennefer asks. Monsters don't fit anywhere in his life anymore.

So when they're walking back from a play one night at a theater on the other side of town, and Yennefer suggests a shortcut, Jaskier thinks nothing of following the two of them as they lead him on a winding path through the backstreets of Oxenfurt that probably isn't any shorter than going straight, but is certainly more interesting. They both love wandering in alleyways, just like he used to—in Lettenhove and then in Oxenfurt and every other city he's explored since then. They run ahead of him, giggling and whispering, but not so far that he loses sight of them.

It means that when the hulking thing slides out of the shadows and starts towards them, he has a perfectly clear view of it all.

Geralt sees it immediately, of course, and pushes Yennefer back behind him. It's all he has time to do before the monster—it looks like a werewolf, but bigger, and with an oddly feline cast to its features—snarls and swipes at him with one huge clawed hand. Blood sprays over its fur and Geralt falls without a sound.

Yennefer screams. It's a wordless howl, far too big for her small body, and it seems to echo in the narrow alleyway. The air around her starts to swirl with a wind that comes from nowhere. Jaskier sees it all, frozen, well beyond thought. He sees the creature recoil from her briefly, then lunge forward and snap its jaws shut.

The air stills.

Something shatters inside him, suddenly and for good. He tears his eyes away from Geralt and Yennefer— _from the bodies,_ he distinctly does not think—and stares into the glowing red eyes of the werewolf-thing. Without quite realizing what he's doing, he starts to walk toward it in measured, steady steps.

It rears up on its hind legs as he approaches, and he doesn't stop. "Come on," he says, almost under his breath at first. Then louder. "Come on, what are you waiting for, I'm right here—come on—come on— _come o_ —"

The crowbar bursts upward and pierces its barrel chest, spiking upward and ripping its way back out at the collarbones. The thing screams, more shrill than its size would seem to promise.

In the moment between the scream and when it falls over with a heavy thud, Jaskier looks down, following the crowbar's path. Geralt is sprawled at the thing's feet, holding himself up with one hand, the other clutching the end of the rusty metal. 

_Geralt_ is sprawled there. Full grown, fully dressed, medallion around his neck, with no blood on him. A foot away, Yennefer stumbles to her feet, the same.

They stare at him, and he stares at them, and he's still so caught up in the wild roaring of his grief that he can't do anything about these rather urgent facts except fall to his knees and bury his face in his hands, shaking all over, violently, helplessly.

They're dead—but they're not—they're here. But they're gone. They're _gone,_ he realizes; he got his wish and now they're gone forever—

"Jaskier," Geralt says, the real Geralt, not the mirage Jaskier just watched die (the one he watched grow up, for the last six months). His voice is so full of feeling it almost doesn't sound like him. "Jaskier, hey," and then he's being wrapped in strong arms, almost swallowed up. He sobs harder, completely unable to stop, and Geralt doesn't try to make him.

A hand touches his shoulder, hesitantly at first, then squeezes hard. Yennefer doesn't say anything, but she sits there with him, and for a while—long, short, he doesn't know—the three of them stay that way.

He doesn't so much calm down as just exhaust himself, but either way eventually the tears and snot and spit slow to a stop, and with a deep shaking breath he wills himself to lift his head.

He can still see the boy in Geralt's face—not so round and young, now, but the shape of his mouth, and his eyes, of course. Those yellow eyes, full of sadness.

"You're back," Jaskier says, rather stupidly, but what does one _say_ in this particular situation? He still feels just on the edge of hysteria.

"Yeah," Geralt says. His voice sounds thick. Like he might be on the edge of something himself.

From the way Geralt is looking at him, he can already guess, but— "You remember?"

"Everything."

A few fresh tears squeeze out at that, because fuck, he'd thought—the whole time he'd been sure that even if he did find a way to turn them back, he'd have to carry it all alone, the memories, the _feelings._ But Geralt remembers, every word, every hug, every song.

And if Geralt remembers—Jaskier turns to look at Yennefer. Her eyes are wide and wet, and she pulls her hand back quickly.

"Wait," he says, because she looks like she's about to bolt, and if she does Jaskier thinks he'll fall apart all over again.

Geralt chimes in with her name, so soft and warm. He'd thought Geralt spoke her name fondly before, but now it's richer, deeper. They know each other now, of course. More intimately than any dozen tumbles could have taught them.

Yennefer shakes her head. "I can't..." She scrubs a hand across her eyes furiously. "I have to go."

Her eyes are just the same. He can see the ghost of her younger self in every movement, and it makes him frantic because he can't lose her _again_ —

"Please," he begs, "please stay, I won't—" He stops, not entirely sure what she's afraid he might do.

"Yenn, it's okay," Geralt says in that same voice. That seems to push her over the edge.

"I'm sorry." She starts to trace a portal. As it flickers to life, she turns back and meets his eyes. "Jaskier..."

He stares at her, frozen.

"Thank you," she says, and steps through. It closes behind her with a sharp gust of wind and a loud crack. The silence that follows is thunderous. 

"She'll be back," Geralt says. He's still holding on to Jaskier, seeming utterly unselfconscious about it. 

"I don't think she will," he says. His voice sounds like it's coming from a long way away.

"Then we'll find her." The absolute certainty is warming, at least. "It'll be okay."

Jaskier hiccups something that's half-laugh, half-sob. "I'm supposed to say that to you. To both of you." Only not anymore, he's not. Because they're gone. The relief at having Geralt back isn't canceling the grief; instead the two sensations are struggling inside him, and he feels like he might be sick.

Geralt pulls him in close again, and Jaskier doesn't resist, despite how utterly strange it is, because it's good, too. "Thank you," he says in Jaskier's ear, almost a whisper.

"Gods, for _what?_ It's not like I could fix you. I'd given up," he admits, and it's horrible to say but strangely freeing. "I was just—going to spend the rest of my life like that. Being a _parent._ I couldn't fix it."

"You were a good parent, though," Geralt says. "You loved us."

He has no idea how to react to that, besides a probably unnecessary urge to apologize. Instead, he swallows hard around the fresh lump in his throat and stumbles to his feet.

"I think," he says, deliberately, "I've had enough of Oxenfurt for awhile. What do you say we get back on the road?"

There's a second before Geralt follows him up, a second where he just gazes up at Jaskier and the look on his face is indescribable. It's certainly not a look Jaskier's seen on him before. It makes him feel somehow naked, and he shifts uncomfortably, waiting.

"Sounds good," Geralt says finally, and stands up.

—

He almost loses it again when he packs up his room. It's full to brimming with the children—Yennefer's potted herbs, Geralt's fencing kit, their perpetually unmade beds, because Jaskier has never seen the point in making a bed you're just going to sleep in again that night. Their clothes, of course; their little toys and treasures—a poppet old Maranna had made for Yennefer, just two weeks ago—

He forces himself to go cold inside, to stop seeing it all. He digs his bag out from under the bed and gets Geralt's armor and swords from the closet where they haven't been touched for months. Geralt just watches him as he packs, a silent warm presence.

"Is that everything?" he asks, when Jaskier finally stops. Jaskier nods, and he picks up the armor and pulls it on, fingers working the buckles and catches as swiftly as they ever have. The swords take their place on his back, and they leave.

Except Geralt pauses, in the front doorway, and looks back. "It was a good life," he says quietly. 

Jaskier can't meet his gaze longer than a moment. "Don't."

"Jaskier..."

"Not now," he says—pleads. "I can't. Okay?"

After a second, Geralt nods, and shuts the door.

They fetch Roach, and they ride. It doesn't take long before the city is behind them.

—

It occurs to Jaskier the next morning that perhaps he should leave for a while—that Geralt might want some time to himself after his peculiar ordeal, or at the very least might want a break from Jaskier.

He can't bring himself to suggest it, though. They may both remember spending the last six months together, but they weren't _together,_ not really. And Jaskier is still raw and grieving, and he doesn't want to be alone.

It doesn't seem like Geralt does, either. He makes no mention of parting, and as the days pass by Jaskier realizes that he's a little different, now. Not fundamentally so—he's still Geralt, still exactly the man that Jaskier missed so bitterly for so long—but he sits closer to Jaskier in the evenings by the fire. Touches his shoulder, claps his back. Lies down nearer to him at night. Sits next to him when they stop at a tavern, rather than across from him.

Jaskier can't honestly say he doesn't like it. For the first few days, he thought the whole experience might have burned his secret longing right out of him, but with Geralt constantly _close_ like this, finding any excuse to touch him gently, he quickly realizes it was a foolish hope, and he grits his teeth and re-resigns himself to a lifetime of yearning.

The first job Geralt takes—a bunch of drowners, it's nothing, but Jaskier sits up late into the night waiting for him to come back, certain beyond all certainty that he won't. He does, of course. He enters the room with a step so light Jaskier wouldn't have woken, if he'd been asleep, and doesn't say anything when he finds that Jaskier isn't. 

There's a nasty bite on the back of his neck that could use some salve, but it won't need stitches. Jaskier's not sure why Geralt asks for his help, because he could reach it easily himself, but he's grateful for the chance to do something with his hands and he applies the ointment as gently as he can.

"Thanks," Geralt says, low and a little halting. Some undefinable energy hangs in the air between them, and Jaskier thinks that if Geralt would just look at him he could figure out what it is. His hand rests on Geralt's shoulder, and he should take it away, but instead he just leaves it there and waits—for Geralt to move, for something to happen. 

But nothing does—only Geralt sighing a little and standing up, crossing to his own bed and getting in with no further conversation. Jaskier lies awake for a while longer that night, even though dawn is hardly four hours away, mind racing with thoughts he can't name and one that he certainly can.

—

They're traveling down the coast, have been for a week, the next time Jaskier gets a chance to perform. He always likes to vary his sets to appeal to local tastes, so he thinks nothing of throwing in a few nautical-themed numbers—a hearty shanty or two, to get the crowd going, and then to settle them down for the night he strums the opening chords of "The Maid on the Shore" without thinking. 

It's not until he's well into the first verse that the memories surface: Yennefer, cross-legged on the bed or curled under the covers, purple eyes gleaming as she listened intently. It was her favorite, he remembers abruptly, and almost chokes on the words in his mouth.

He manages to keep singing with merely a brief stammer, and he keeps his fingers moving on the lute, but it's merely an automatic reflex. Against the far wall, Geralt is watching him with an unblinking stare, and Jaskier knows he's remembering too.

He finishes the song, or at least his body does, his voice and fingers plodding merrily forward without any conscious input from his mind. He can't tear his eyes away from Geralt, who is watching in perfect stillness, not even lifting his cup to drink. After the last verse Jaskier bows, and thanks the crowd, and gathers his money, and when he looks up again Geralt has gone back upstairs.

Jaskier follows, stomach suddenly churning with a blend of trepidation and—anticipation, perhaps? He can't identify the feeling, only that it's _strong_ and leaves his mouth dry and his heart racing. When he enters their room Geralt is sitting on the bed—just one, this time; it had been the last room available and it's hardly the first time they've had to share—and staring into the unlit fireplace, and he doesn't look up.

"When you sang to us," he says, and stops. Jaskier freezes, not daring even to breathe. "When you sang to us, we felt...safe. It was good."

"Well, that was the goal," Jaskier says faintly. Geralt does look at him then. His eyes are bright and warm.

"I don't know how to thank you," he says. "How to even start."

"You don't have to _thank_ me," Jaskier says, feeling thoroughly wrong-footed. He sits down next to Geralt, though not as close as Geralt usually sits to him, these days. "What was I going to do, just walk away and leave you there? Four feet tall and not even knowing what year it was?"

"You could have given us to someone else to raise. You didn't have to—you gave up your whole _life,_ " Geralt says, and the way he says it makes it sound important. Like Jaskier's life is something that matters, something of great import and value. "For us. You loved us."

"I...you were _children,_ " he says helplessly. "Of course I did. Anyone would."

"No," Geralt says quietly. "Not anyone."

Jaskier thinks of Yennefer shying away from his gesturing hand—of Geralt asking, impatient and confused, about punishment—and supposes that he's right. Plenty of people hadn't.

"No," he agrees, and sighs. "Well. I've always been a soft touch."

"No, you haven't." Geralt sounds amused, but frustrated too. He's moved closer, Jaskier realizes; they're almost touching now. His heart kicks a little in his chest.

"Geralt..." Geralt turns to look at him, and he forgets whatever he was going to say in the face of those eyes, fiercely intent. They almost seem to glow with a strange inner fire, and though Geralt still—somehow—isn't actually touching him, Jaskier feels pinned to the spot.

"This isn't me thanking you," Geralt says, and leans in slowly enough that Jaskier could keep from being kissed, if he wanted to.

He doesn't.

It's far from the most passionate kiss he's ever experienced, but the slow, gentle press of Geralt's tongue between his lips leaves no room for doubt as to his intentions, and Jaskier feels himself flush as he opens up for it. It's right that this should be soft, he thinks disjointedly, hands clenching by his sides. It's all just—right. Only one thing is missing, and he doesn't even realize he's thinking it until the words leave his mouth. 

"We need to find Yennefer." Geralt's eyebrows raise, and Jaskier practically trips over his tongue. "Not for _this._ Just—it's not right, without her."

Geralt sighs. "I know."

Jaskier's not sure _he_ knows what he means, so he doesn't see how Geralt can, but somehow it just feels true. Yennefer is an open wound; when he thinks of her he's right back in that alley, weeping and raw. He needs to see her again, and talk to her, and put things right between them. 

(It should feel strange that there's _anything_ between them, but he stopped thinking of Yennefer as a stranger a long time ago.)

"I don't suppose you know where she'd go?" he asks.

Geralt shakes his head. "But we'll run into her, eventually. It won't take too long."

"You don't actually know that," Jaskier says. "Just because the two of you always..." He trails off. Geralt isn't quite looking at him anymore, and he looks...uncomfortable.

"I do know," Geralt says, and he says it like he doesn't really want to. "I, uh. I...made a wish."

For a second Jaskier stares at him blankly. Then he rewinds about three and a half years and his eyes widen. "The djinn," he says, and Geralt nods stiffly. "Gods, Geralt, tell me you didn't wish for her to love you."

" _No,_ " Geralt says, affronted. Jaskier knows he wouldn't—he can't imagine a more repellent act—but it's still a relief to hear it. "I just...tied us together. Our fates. And ever since then..."

"Your paths keep crossing," Jaskier finishes. "Well, I suppose that's convenient." He narrows his eyes. "Does she know about this?" 

Geralt says nothing, but his frown is answer enough.

"Geralt," Jaskier sighs, and leans against his shoulder. "You have to tell her."

"I know," Geralt mutters. "I will. Next time."

His hand finds Jaskier's, and squeezes it. Jaskier closes his eyes and lets out a long breath. They sit like that for a while, the chattering hum from downstairs fading as travelers leave or retreat to their rooms. Sharing silence with Geralt has always felt like a risk; it's why Jaskier has always rushed to fill it with chatter or song. Now, though, he has no more great secret to fiercely conceal, and no hopeless longing that will overtake him if he slows down for a moment. Geralt is here, and whole, and—in some measure—his, and the line of his body against Jaskier's is warm.

The grief, he suspects, will never leave him entirely. The children carved out a corner of his heart that's empty now, and it calls for them, and it hurts. But his heart feels full nonetheless.

It's not the first time he's shared a bed with Geralt, but it's the first time he's given in to the urge to wrap an arm around him, chest tight against Geralt's broad back, face buried in his hair. He feels Geralt relax against him and breathes out slowly, feeling suddenly very tired. Without quite realizing what he's doing, he starts to hum.

It's not any particular tune, just an idle fragment, something he's been working on for months and could never quite pin down. He still can't, but it doesn't seem to need a resolution. He hums for a minute, mind drifting lazily, before abruptly coming back to himself and stopping.

"Sorry," he mutters, feeling vaguely embarrassed.

But Geralt only squeezes Jaskier's hand on his chest and says, in a voice just on the edge of sleep, "Don't stop."

"Oh," Jaskier says, oddly touched, "okay," and starts to hum again.

**Author's Note:**

> YES there will be a sequel, at least I dearly hope there will be. It may or may not be OT3, I haven't decided yet, but it will definitely be about Yennefer. Meanwhile, if you want to listen to the songs Jaskier sings to the kids, I made a thread of a bunch of them [here!](https://twitter.com/some_stars/status/1235597942624567296)
> 
> Follow me on [Tumblr](http://some-stars.tumblr.com/) for Witcher shitposts, WIP updates, occasional prompt fills, and just because I very much need people to talk to about this stupid, stupid show. :D? :D? Also if you would like to reblog this story, you can [do so here!](https://some-stars.tumblr.com/post/615231441831428096/all-some-children-do-is-work-somestars-the)


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